environment | Automotive
“What is great about the Recyclite project is that we are taking a recycled material but we are trying to better what we have got now with the increased scratch performance,” says the car maker’s Senior Engineer Sustainable Materials Innovation Rachel Punch. The project will also investigate other key criteria for
Above: Lifecycle analysis carried out by Jaguar Land Rover on vehicles such as its XJ model has shown material production makes a significant contribution to manufacturing emissions
looked at the new Range Rover and also the XJ that was launched a couple of years ago - and what we’ve seen from that is while the usage phase is the biggest in terms of emissions produced, the next biggest phase is materials production. In order to reduce our environ- mental impact in line with our 2020 strategy we are looking at a number of projects to reduce the lifecycle impact of our materials production,” he says. Crow says Jaguar Land Rover already uses consider-
able volumes of recycled polymer on its vehicles - the latest Range Rover model uses around 34kg of recycled plastics while the smaller Evoque uses 16kg. At present, however, recycled polymer would be the first considera- tion only for non-visible “low risk” parts with basic performance requirements. He says the company’s goal is to push the use of recycled plastics into more demanding structural applications and Class A interior surfaces.
Validation at all levels Its initial goal with the Recyclite project is to validate the materials at a plaque and part level. “For us the target is characterising and validating this novel alternative material in an attempt to use it in our Class A interior trim applications to improve on scratch performance. It also gives us the benefit of reduced weight because it is less dense,” he says. One of the major appeals of the Recyclite project is
that it offers the potential to meet Jaguar Land Rover’s environmental goals without sacrificing on performance.
Right: New Recyclite
grades must match or
exceed the
performance of existing
polymers used in Jaguar Land Rover models, the company says
14 INJECTION WORLD | March 2015
automotive Class A adoption, including colour and availability as well as how to communicate the suitabil- ity of recycled grades to its engineers. “With recycled material there is a question of consistency and availability compared to virgin plastic,” says Punch. “When it comes to what we are looking at now, which is A surface, then the application of colour is important. Recycled materials normally come in black and it is difficult to choose colours. Can we have a white material? Or a grey material?”
Availability concerns Crow says availability is a major concern for the car maker as supply chain weaknesses can expose it to additional cost and work. “At the moment the level of maturity of collecting recycled polymers in the UK in terms of supply chain is not where we are with alumini- um, for example. One of the big issues that we’ve got is making sure we have enough recycled material available to support applications in components,” he says. “It certainly presents challenges if you have to start
looking for alternative materials once you have tooling manufactured and have parts in production. There’s a lot of validation and a lot of cost,” Crow explains. “At the moment, there are instances where we have to validate two materials to make sure that, if recycled material sources dry up, there is an alternative that we can turn to.” Cost has also been a long standing concern in the adoption of recycled materials. While it remains a key consideration, the landscape has moved a little. “If you talk about how we develop our benchmarking expecta- tions, the recycled content historically has been derived by weight but that is actually quite a crude measure. We are now moving towards a life cycle analysis target at a system level,” Crow says. “From our perspective, we do not expect to see any
degradation in performance using recycled polymer. And for recycled content alone we won’t be looking to pay any more. But, when you talk about light-weighting, the automotive industry has a target in terms of CO2 emis- sions and that puts a value onto lightweight materials. There is the potential to pay more to take weight out but not for recycled content on its own,” he says. Crow says Jaguar Land Rover also sees value in the
reduced manufacturing emissions associated with using recycled polymers, although this value is not so easily quantified. “The reality is we can’t assign a hard
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